I Sought Him Whom My Soul Loveth
by Philippa Somerville
Summary: Rose and the Human Doctor make a startling discovery about a dear friend. This is a short coda to the story I began in My Beloved is Unto Me and Thou Hast Ravished My Heart
1. Chapter 1

**I Sought Him Whom My Soul Loveth**

This is intended as a short final story in the trilogy begun in My Beloved is Unto Me and continued in Thou Hast Ravished My Heart. Section breaks are marked by two bold-faced words

**Chapter 1**

**Rose Tyler** pushed aside the plate containing the remains of her toast and scrambled eggs and shifted her weight on the hard bench of the booth in the little café. She turned her head slightly to look at the Doctor, who sat next to her, his thigh pressed to hers. It was a tiny movement on her part, but he caught it nonetheless and turned to look into her eyes, lifting his brows expressively before turning his gaze back to the woman who sat across from them. He held his fork in his hand, but he was not eating much. The dish in front of him contained some sort of concoction involving waffles and fruit syrup and whipped cream, so sugary that it made Rose's teeth ache just to contemplate it. It was the sort of treat that he would normally attack with a wolfish grin and a gleeful sound in the back of his throat, but today he had only taken a few bites, and now he drew the tines of his fork absentmindedly across the top of the waffle. But his eyes were not on the grooved patterns he left in the fluffy cream; instead he, like Rose, seemed more absorbed with watching their breakfast companion than with eating.

Actually, that wasn't quite right, was it? After all, to say "breakfast companion" implied that Annie was eating too, but this was not so. Rather their friend had both her hands wrapped around her coffee mug, which had been refilled repeatedly in the short time it took Rose to eat her eggs. Annie's fingers were tight on the cup, and while her hands did not shake as she brought the cup to her lips, Rose had the impression that she held on to the hot ceramic as if to a lifeline.

To someone who didn't know her, it would have been hard to spot what was wrong with their friend on that gray morning. She was dressed as carefully as ever; her dark hair was neat; her eyes were not red or puffy; she did not tremble or dart her eyes about or smell of alcohol. A stranger would not have looked at her twice. And yet, Rose was absolutely certain that something was terribly wrong, and she knew the Doctor thought so too, for she could feel the anxiety radiating off of him. What, she asked herself, was troubling her about the appearance of a woman who seemed merely to be sitting at breakfast with friends, quietly, steadily sipping a cup of coffee? Perhaps the slightly-too-clockwork rhythm with which she took those sips? Perhaps the now stone-cold bowl of oatmeal and fruit that sat untouched in front of her? No, it was more than that. Her friend, who normally enjoyed nothing more than companionship and talking with those she loved, was far away from them now, in mind if not in body. And… Rose shot another glance at the Doctor. He met her eyes again, and this time he nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if he had read her mind. He saw it, too. Not surprising, of course, since he was the one who had insisted that they invite Annie to breakfast, saying that something had seemed wrong with her at school for the past few weeks. Rose had not seen Annie in that time, having been away on a long mission for Torchwood. At first, listening to the Doctor's frustratingly vague description of Annie's behavior, she had dismissed his concerns. Surely, she had said, Annie was just tired, or stressed by the demands of her students? But now she could see what had caused the Doctor's worry.

Annie, Rose felt certain, was afraid.

**It must** have seemed a strange friendship, to anyone on the outside. When the Doctor started teaching, Rose had heard him speak of Annie often—she was the Maths teacher to his Physics teacher, a colleague, someone he spoke of with admiration but not much more. Then the Doctor confessed to Rose that Annie had kissed him, at the end of a jovial pub night with his fellow teachers. He had scrambled to blunt the damage of this revelation, telling her that Annie had not known he was attached, and indeed that she had been apologetic and humiliated when she found out. Rose had accepted this explanation with an equanimity that surprised even herself; the Doctor's confession had come after a bad fight, but also on the heels of a lovely reconciliation—one that ended, in fact, with his proposal. For a few days after that, Rose and the Doctor had been too absorbed in their own delight—and then with the ruckus that came from telling her family of their engagement—for Rose to think about Annie again. Then, one quiet afternoon when she was at her desk at Torchwood, with nothing to do for the moment but to sip a cup of tea that Jake had brought her and to fiddle with the new stone on her left hand, her mind turned back to the Doctor's story. He had explained to her what he knew about Annie: that she had been married while very young to an American, a dozen years older than herself, whom she had met at Oxford. That she had followed that man back to his home town of Chicago, teaching in the public schools there while he worked to finish a doctorate in history. That he had been killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle. That Annie had eventually gathered herself together and returned to London, where, still dazed by grief, she fell back on teaching as solace and distraction and took up the job she still held.

An odd thing, perhaps, to seek out a woman who had made a pass at her fiancé. At the time, Rose could not quite articulate what it was that made her lift her phone and ask the Torchwood operator to find her Annie's home number. And a few days later, when she first sat across from this composed, dark-haired woman who watched her with a mix of wariness and curiosity, she felt nervous and at a loss for words. Strange, again—why should she be nervous? After their attempts at small talk had faded awkwardly, Annie had decided to address the issue head-on. She suddenly leant forward and met Rose's gaze. "Rose, I have to say…I didn't know what to expect when you wanted to meet. I knew that John told you about the unfortunate thing…kiss…after the pub. But he also said that he told you I would never have done that if I knew about you. And, I mean, you got engaged—congratulations, by the way—so things seem fine between you two. So…I mean, I hope you don't feel the need to…to warn me off him, or something. Because I wouldn't…"

Now Rose found her voice and stopped her. "No, Annie. I'm not here to scold you. Not at all. The opposite. The Doctor—John—thinks so highly of you. He values your friendship. And I…well, all my friends are blokes I work with, so I was hoping…well, I was hoping to get to know you. I was hoping we all could be friends. All three of us." Here she stopped, then burst into laughter. Annie looked a bit startled, but the beginnings of a smile played around her mouth. Rose touched the other woman's hand lightly with her own. "I suppose that sounded incredibly sad—'will you be my friend'? But I guess it's what I'm saying. I know the Doctor wants us to be friends, but he'd never actually suggest it."

Now Annie's smile broadened, became more genuine. "Seriously? You don't mind about…you know?"

"No. I trust you both. And…I trust the Doctor and me, us." Rose realized, with a warmth in her chest, that this was finally true.

"Well." Annie paused, seeming to consider. "I mean, yes, of course. It'd be great to get to know you. John is my favorite colleague. It would be fun."

"Excellent. Well. We were going to go to the cinema tomorrow night, and then for Chinese. Join us?"

Annie nodded slowly. "Yes, lovely. I always enjoy going out on Friday night, shaking off the week. Yes. Ta."

**And that** had been the beginning. Very quickly, Rose and the Doctor had fallen into the habit of seeing Annie regularly. At least once a week, Annie would leave school with the Doctor and accompany him on the walk to Torchwood. Together they would drag Rose from whatever project she was working on with the insistence that dinner be eaten before the middle of the night. Soon Jake began leaving with them and became close with Annie as well. In the early months, Annie would sometimes make a half-hearted protest about being a "third wheel" on the Doctor and Rose's outings, but her misgivings were dismissed by both. "Besides," Jake remarked one warm night as they all sat drinking Negronis on the terrace of an Italian restaurant, "better-looking third and fourth wheels could not be found, Annie dear. We're a credit to these two." Annie reached and clinked her glass to his.

After several months of this, Rose invited Annie along with Jake to the Tyler mansion for Sunday lunch. The night before, as they sat in the living room after dinner, she told the Doctor, "I want to tell Annie about me."

He looked up at her from his book. "Really? Which part?"

"The other universe. The Doctor there. The trip here."

He nodded slowly. "You trust her, then?"

"I do. She's already so important to us. If she's to be a real friend, she needs to know."

"Yes, I suppose so." He paused. "What about me?"

"Well, that's up to you. Do you want her to know?"

He considered. "Why don't we see how she takes your news and then we'll talk about mine? It's one thing to be a human from another universe. It's another to be an alien-human hybrid. Wouldn't want her to be too rattled."

They needn't have worried. On the long car journey down to the mansion, Rose sat in the back seat next to Annie while the two men sat in front, and as soon as they got moving on the motorway, she launched into her tale. Annie listened quietly, reaching out to squeeze her friend's hand when Rose told of the loss of her first Doctor. When Rose finished, Annie met her eyes. "I'm sorry for your losses, Rose. I can't say I'm not glad you're here, but I'm sorry you lost so much to be here."

Rose smiled. "I was afraid you might think I'm mad, telling you such a story."

"Why? I lived through the Cybermen business, didn't I? And I know what Torchwood does. It's no secret that there's more things in heaven and earth, as the play says. And, you know…I always thought you had sadness in you, Rose. That you'd had a loss. Maybe it takes one to know one. But anyway, now I know why."

Impulsively, Rose reached out, pulling against her seatbelt, and hugged the other woman. "You're a gem, Annie."

"Well…" Annie looked embarrassed, though she returned the embrace. "Hardly." She thought for a moment. "So you met John when you arrived in this universe?"

Rose met the Doctor's eyes in the rearview mirror. He saw the question in her eyes and nodded. Rose drew breath and turned back to Annie. "Not exactly, no."

The story took a long time to finish, and the car was crunching its way up the gravel drive when Rose finally came to an end. The Doctor turned off the engine and all four of them got out of the car without a word. Annie stood with arms folded, staring at the Doctor as he came to stand in front of her. Then, slowly, she moved her hand and briefly cupped his cheek. "Blimey, John," she said, letting her hand fall.

He regarded her seriously. "I know."

"You're an alien."

"Only partly."

She huffed out her breath and shook her head, looking down for a moment before shooting him a mischievous look from under her eyelids. "Well, it explains a lot, I suppose."

"Oy!" The Doctor's protest was ruined by his own laughter, as he caught Annie in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground.

At that moment, the door to the mansion opened and Tony burst out, followed by Jackie and Pete.

Late in the afternoon, Annie, Jake, and the Doctor had taken Tony for a walk around the grounds while Rose helped Pete and Jackie with the lunch dishes. Jackie remarked, "She's a lovely girl, your friend. So nice for you to have a woman friend for a change. Nothing against Jake of course, but…"

"You're right, Mum. It's been a treat getting to know her."

"Is she seeing anyone?"

"No…" Rose sighed, then told her parents Annie's story in brief.

Jackie laid her hand over her heart as she listened. "That poor girl."

Rose nodded. "I know. It's so unfair."

Pete spoke up, although he kept his eyes on the dishes he was drying. "How much does she know about you?"

"She knows everything."

That caused Pete to pause and look up at her, his hands stilled. He raised his eyebrows. "Is that so?"

"I trust her."

"Yes, I suppose you must do, to confide so much. About the Doctor too?"

"Yes."

"Well. I hope your confidence isn't misplaced."

"I'm sure it's not," Jackie said firmly.

Rose shot her mother a grateful glance and then returned her gaze to her stepfather. Pete regarded her for a long moment and then said, "You know how much trust I put in your judgment, Rose."

Rose smiled and moved to hug him. "I promised Tony I'd join the game of hide and go seek before we leave."

Jackie waved her hand at her daughter. "Off you go then. Don't want to keep his little lordship waiting."

**By the** time a year had passed, it was fair to say that the Doctor and Rose counted Annie and Jake as their best friends, their closest confidantes. Rose felt almost giddy to have a best girl friend again, just like the old days with Shireen—long talks punctuated with laughter and exchanges of confidences. In one area, however, she had no luck. She and the Doctor tried—prompted at first by Jackie, who had grown very fond of Annie and who loved nothing more than to make matches—to set Annie up on dates, but here they met inexorable resistance. At first they had tried to suggest she go out with Matthew, the English teacher who had a crush on her so severe he practically panted in her presence. She rolled her eyes at them when they suggested it.

"You're not serious?" she said, looking back and forth between them.

"Why not?" The Doctor sounded a bit indignant on Matthew's behalf. "He's a nice enough bloke."

"Absolutely he is. And he likes me a lot. And that's why."

"What's why?" Now the Doctor just looked confused.

"My dear idiot, I know I don't feel anything for him beyond friendship. And it's hardly sporting to lead someone on if they have feelings for you, is it?"

And so it went: whenever they tried to encourage her to meet someone, she invariably said kind things about the would-be suitor but absolutely refused to meet him. Once she had become friends with Jake, she would recruit him in her evasion tactics, claiming—always with a smile and a playful gaze of ersatz longing—that if only this one liked girls, she'd be ready to go out at a moment's notice. Jake played along willingly, kissing her hand with exaggerated gallantry and saying, "if only it were possible, dearest, I'd do it for you."

Jake was less gentle, however, when Rose brought the issue up with him alone. She had been complaining, over the course of a few minutes, of Annie's absolute refusal to go on a date with a man whom Rose had met through her work on one of the Vitex boards. After listening in silence for a time, suddenly Jake had brought his open hand down, hard, on the table between them, making their coffee cups jump and the liquid slosh into the saucers. Rose, startled, stared at him.

"Enough! Why don't you leave the poor girl be? She doesn't want to date anyone, obviously."

Rose was hurt and also annoyed. There was no reason for him to yell at her—Jake knew she was only trying to help, she told him indignantly.

"I know, Rosie. But really… She's made it clear to you. Why not leave it?"

"But Jake, she'll never find anyone if she doesn't try…"

"And? Maybe she doesn't want to find anyone. Maybe she's done."

"That's a terrible thing to say!"

"Is it?" He leaned back and regarded her coolly. "Not all of us are lucky enough to get back a copy of our lost loves." He sighed and passed a hand over his face. "And those of us that do don't always get a new-and-improved copy." She looked abashed and reached for his fingers. He squeezed hers. "Rose, you must let her be. Okay?"

She nodded. The next time she saw Annie she felt she had to apologize for their persistent attempts at match-making. Annie, true to form, merely shrugged it off. "Don't worry about it."

"I do worry, though. I thought I was doing something good for you, but Jake told me to leave it. Told me…" She paused long enough that Annie looked intrigued.

"Told you what?"

Rose sighed. "Told me maybe you were done with love." Annie looked startled and Rose hurried on, "I told him that was a terrible thing to say. Just because Mark died doesn't mean you'll never find love again."

Annie shook her head. "I can't see the future, Rose. But what I feel now is…I don't want anyone else. Maybe that'll change, I don't know. But that's how it is for now."

"But…" Rose paused. "But you kissed the Doctor." Annie arched an eyebrow at her and Rose hurried on. "I'm not holding it over you, of course. I'm just saying—you must have been interested in him. Interested in a man, I mean. Why couldn't that happen again?"

Annie relaxed but wrinkled her forehead. "You're right, of course. I can't explain that. I mean"—here she grinned at Rose—"John's lovely to look at, but then so's Matt, isn't he? So it's not like I'm making passes at every good-looking man I meet. No…" She was silent for a moment. "It's hard for me to explain. John seemed…familiar to me. Like I knew him, or he knew me. He felt like home. That's why I kissed him. In retrospect, I'm not even sure it was a romantic feeling. I think maybe we were just meant to be friends."

**"Annie?" Rose** said her name quietly, afraid of startling her out of her reverie. Annie's eyes snapped to hers. She seemed startled to be addressed, even though she sat across from her two best friends in the world. Yes, thought Rose, something is definitely not right.

"Annie, are you alright? Something seems…you seem different. Far away."

Annie's eyes slid away again. "I don't know what you mean, Rose. I'm fine."

Here the Doctor interrupted. "Annie, you're not. You haven't been for two weeks. I've seen it, and I told Rose. I couldn't tell her what it was, but now she sees it too. What is going on?"

Annie raised her hand to her forehead and ran her fingertips, hard, along her brow. "You wouldn't understand," she said, a chill in her voice.

"Annie!" Rose was hurt, more hurt than she would have anticipated, by this simple statement, this rejection of her overture.

"I'm sorry, but you wouldn't. This is… I don't understand it myself. I can't hope to explain it to you."

"Annie, please." The Doctor now. "Think who you're talking to. Do you really think you can startle us?"

Annie grinned bitterly, setting down her mug with a clap on the table. "I think even you might not have heard this one before."

Rose reached for her hand, which was cold, despite having held the warm cup for so long. "Try me. Trust us, Annie. Please. We love you, and we want to help."

Annie stared down at the table and drummed her free hand on its surface. Rose and the Doctor exchanged another glance, agreeing silently not to say more while Annie thought. Finally, barely audibly, she whispered, "You won't believe me. You'll think I'm mad."

Rose tightened her grip on Annie's hand. "We won't."

Annie shook her head, eyes still down. Now a tear made its way down her cheek. The Doctor took her other hand, stilling the drumming. "Annie." His voice was commanding, and she finally raised her eyes to look at him. "We won't. Tell us."

Annie closed her eyes and sighed. More tears forced their way out from behind her lashes, but then she opened her eyes and gave a watery laugh. "Oh, hell. Fine. I've seen Mark."

Neither Rose nor the Doctor spoke for a moment, staring at her. Annie's gaze was a mix of fear, pleading, and defiance. Finally, the Doctor said, slowly, "Mark? Your husband?"

"My dead husband, you mean. Yes."

Rose said, "You've seen him? Where? Could you have been asleep?"

"I don't think so. Unless I'm sleepwalking. It's always been in public. On the Tube. On the street." She shook her head. "I've almost been run down by a couple of cars because I stopped dead in my tracks. The drivers have chewed me out. I don't think I could have dreamt all that."

"Okay." The Doctor frowned. "Let's think. Either you're hallucinating while awake, or you're seeing someone who looks like Mark, or he's not dead."

"Doctor!" Rose hissed, a bit shocked at the coldly analytical tone. But she saw the relief in Annie's face—she seemed to take comfort in an assessment of the problem, rather than an outpouring of emotion.

Annie said, "Well, it can't be number three. I'm hoping it's two, since I don't like the implications of the first one." She took a shaky breath and scrubbed her face with a napkin.

They spent the next half an hour discussing the exact details of Annie's sightings of this man whom she was convinced was Mark. Rose took copious notes in her small notebook, and she told Annie that she would open a Torchwood file on it that very day. Annie demurred at that. "Rose, I don't know…I don't know if it's real or not."

"Unexplained happenings are what we do, Annie. Let me look into it. Let me help."

A smile of relief crossed Annie's face. "Okay. Thank you. Thank you both."

As they stood to go, Rose paused, a thought occurring to her. "Annie, do you have a picture of Mark? I've never seen one. It would help, to know what we're looking for."

Annie nodded. "I suppose it's strange that I don't keep photos out at home. They just make me too sad, even now. But I have one in my bag, hang on…" She had dug a bit for her wallet and retrieved a slightly dog-eared photo from an interior pocket. She glanced down at it for a moment, a smile curving her mouth, brushing her thumb lightly over the surface of the picture. "This is Mark. In Oxford, soon after we met."

**It had** been an afterthought, Rose reflected as she stood by the Doctor on the pavement outside the café, watching Annie make her way down the sidewalk toward the Tube. Just a passing idea, to ask for a photo. Why, she thought suddenly, had she never asked to see Mark's image before. Strange, that. She'd never forget how Annie had looked so lovely, staring down at the picture before handing it over.

Rose drew a long breath. "I thought you said…"

The Doctor interrupted her before she could finish. "I know."

"You said…not in this universe."

"The list of things I have been wrong about, Rose, is getting very long at this point. It really should cease to surprise you." His voice was chill and bitter. When she glanced in his direction, his eyes remained resolutely ahead.

They said nothing more, and they did not move for a long time, long after their friend had vanished from sight. In her wallet, they now knew, she carried a photo of the man she had loved. A man with a prominent nose, close-cropped dark hair, and large ears. A man with ice blue eyes and a slightly manic grin. A man whose face they both knew as well as their own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Rose, Jake, and the Doctor sat around the small conference table in Rose's office, waiting for the phone to buzz to tell them Annie was waiting downstairs. None of them spoke, and the silence was deeply awkward. Or at least Rose thought so—she couldn't actually get either man to look at her long enough to gauge their thoughts. Jake was engaged in methodically shredding the label on his bottle of water, while the Doctor drew intricate designs on his notepad. Rose shifted in her seat and glared at them both in turn, but neither of them registered her displeasure.

It had been a mere ten hours since they had parted from Annie, but what a ten hours. Rose and the Doctor, once they had roused themselves from the stupor caused by seeing the face of the Doctor's ninth form looking back at them from Annie's photograph, had called Jake and summoned him to Torchwood immediately. Jake had protested to the Doctor that it was Sunday morning and he was not on duty that weekend, but the Doctor had cut him off, saying brusquely, "It's trouble, Jake, and it's about Annie." All his objections overridden by that statement, Jake arrived at Torchwood within a half hour, unshaven and a bit bleary-eyed. "I was out last night," he said brusquely, as if daring them to tease him for looking uncharacteristically scruffy. Once he heard their story, however, all thoughts of teasing were gone and he focused on the task of uncovering the truth behind the reappearance of Annie's husband.

Rose had spent much of the walk from the café to her office trying to reconstruct in her mind a conversation she had had with Mickey soon after she began working at Torchwood. It was years ago now, at a time when she was still fragile and recovering from her breakdown after being left in this universe. She had still been scrabbling desperately for ways to get back to her Doctor. One evening, as she and Mickey lay sprawled on either end of the couch in his office drinking beers, an idea had occurred to her. "Micks…what if there're Time Lords in this universe? Maybe they could help us."

"You know what the Doctor said…no Time Lords here."

"But maybe he was wrong…"

"Nah. We actually looked for the TARDIS frequency when I first got here. There's nothing."

Rose scrubbed her hand over her eyes. "Ah, well. It couldn't be that easy, could it?"

"Never is," Mickey agreed.

Rose recounted this exchange to Jake and the Doctor as they discussed ideas for how to proceed. Jake sipped thoughtfully from a cup of coffee and the Doctor sat silent with his hands folded as they listened. When Rose finished, Jake said, "Well, a lot of things are a bit different in this universe, Mickey always said. Did you look at a range of frequencies on either side of the one from your universe?"

Rose opened her mouth and shut it again. They hadn't. Why hadn't they thought of that? She hadn't, nor Mickey, nor Pete…why? It was hardly a revolutionary idea. And yet…

She raised her gaze to Jake's questioning one. "No," she confessed, "we never did."

Jake waited for her to say more, and when the silence stretched out he raised his eyebrows and said, "Well…?"

Rose shook herself and looked at the Doctor. He remained quiet, his eyes resolutely on his hands. In the absence of any response from him, Rose finally said, "Yeah. Let's do it. Now."

And that had been that. It had been so ridiculously, almost depressingly simple. When the Doctor had widened the search parameters for TARDIS frequencies, there it was. In London. At this very moment, in fact, it appeared to be parked about three blocks from Annie's apartment. No wonder she had been seeing that familiar face everywhere.

As they looked at the blinking screen, Rose felt a wave of dislocation and disbelief, but also a dawning sense of wonder. A Time Lord. In this universe. The possibilities were incredibly exciting, both for her and the Doctor, and for Torchwood and the planet as a whole. She looked down at the Doctor, but all she could see from her vantage point was the back of his head and the long fingers of his left hand, massaging his temple as if his head ached. She needed to know what he was thinking. He must be excited, to see another of his kind—or half his kind. She circled around the edge of the desk, a small smile on her lips, waiting to catch his expression. What she saw, however, was not what she expected. His face looked impossibly pale, his freckles standing out in the soft light from the screen. His glasses reflected some of that light, making his eyes invisible to her. But she could tell enough from what she could see—the tightness of his jaw, the way his lips were pressed together, the line between his brows. Whatever excitement or happiness she was feeling at the turn of events, he did not share it.

**Rose's phone** gave the distinctive buzz of the front desk letting her know a visitor had arrived. As Rose reached over to lift the receiver and speak to the receptionist, Jake looked at the Doctor. The men's eyes met and, Rose noticed with a small flare of annoyance, some unspoken understanding passed between them. Jake said, "I'll get her." He rose from his chair, swept the remains of his water bottle label into his hand, and left, depositing the confetti he had made in Rose's dustbin on his way out of her office.

When they were left alone, Rose expected the Doctor to talk to her, but instead, he resumed his quest to perfect the Byzantine swirls and whorls in his notebook. Rose stared at him with increasing frustration, waiting for him to respond in some way to the momentous revelations of the day. Finally, she gave up and spoke first. "Can you believe it, Doctor? A Time Lord."

"It would appear so." His eyes remained on the paper.

She tried again. "If he died when he was hit while cycling, and then he regenerated, he wouldn't have the same face."

"Presumably."

"So, what then? Did he use the chameleon arch?"

"It's a possibility."

"Doctor!" Rose almost shouted her frustration, bringing her palm down on the table. Jake's abandoned water bottle tipped over and rolled slowly to the edge, teetering there for a moment before it hit the floor with a hollow sound. The Doctor's gaze followed the bottle's progress and then lifted to meet hers. Rose drew a breath at the look in his eyes. How could eyes such a warm brown look so cold? But then he blinked and scrubbed his brow tiredly with his palm, and the impression passed. He smiled at her, a bit wanly.

"Rose, I don't know what to say. If we assume that the Time Lords of this universe have the same technology and follow the same rules as ours, then yes, a Time Lord who had used the chameleon arch is the best guess for who Mark was. But that's a big 'if,' isn't it?"

She nodded, but she still felt disconcerted by her inability to read his emotions. Her beloved Doctor was usually such an open book…he was, in that way, the opposite of the Time Lords she had known. Ever since they had gazed together on Mark's photo that morning, however, he had been shuttered to her. So she tried yet again. "What do you think, Doctor? Another Time Lord."

He flinched. "I'm not a Time Lord, Rose. Not any more."

**Rose opened** her mouth to reply when the chime of the elevator stopped her. They both turned toward the sound in time to see Jake emerge with Annie. He had her arm drawn through his and it was obvious why he had offered this physical support; their friend looked a bit of a mess, like she needed it. She had clearly not slept or even relaxed since they last saw her. Jake escorted her to the fourth chair and settled her into it, squeezing her shoulder as he moved to sit again in his own. There were no pleasantries exchanged.

Despite her obvious exhaustion, Annie's gaze was sharp. She surveyed the three of them, each in turn, before addressing herself to Rose. "You recognized him, didn't you? This morning."

Rose did not avoid her friend's eyes. "We did."

"Well?"

Now the Doctor spoke. "Annie, you remember we told you that I was a Time Lord in the other universe? An alien with technology and knowledge far beyond humans?"

"Of course."

"Well, one thing that Time Lords can do is…it's very hard to kill us. When we are critically wounded, we regenerate."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we change our bodies. Exchange all the damaged cells for fresh ones. Start new. New face, new body, new person."

Annie nodded slowly, clearly a bit puzzled about where this was going. "So, this face was not always your face?"

"No, it's my tenth." Annie raised her eyebrows but made no comment, so the Doctor continued. "When I first met Rose, I was in my ninth body."

Annie turned to Rose. "So you saw him…change? Regenerate?"

"I did. Once a full regeneration and once a partial—it's hard to explain, but that's when this Doctor got started."

"Okay...but I'm confused. How does Mark fit into all of this?"

The Doctor said, "My ninth self? I looked like Mark. Identical."

Annie's mouth dropped open. "What?"

No one responded, instead giving her time to process this information. Finally she said, "Oh, but you said people have twins in each universe. Jake…your Mickey and the other Mickey. You told me."

"That's true," Jake said. "But if that were it—if Mark were a human who just happened to look like the Doctor from the other universe—it wouldn't explain his reappearance. He'd still be dead, from the cycling accident."

Annie looked back and forth between them warily. "So…"

Rose sighed. "We always assumed that there were no Time Lords in this universe. We looked for the TARDIS frequency, for the usual signs, and they weren't there. But we didn't look very hard, because the Doctor—my second Doctor—said there weren't any here. But…it seems he was wrong."

Annie stared mutely at her, so Rose continued, "Once we broadened the frequencies we were searching for, we found it. TARDIS signatures. They're a bit different than our universe, but unmistakable. There's at least one Time Lord here."

"And you think…" Annie swallowed. "You think Mark was a Time Lord?"

"Yes."

Annie blinked twice, and then she startled them all by bursting into laughter. Jake said, "Annie…" under his breath, as she leaned her head on her hand, shaking with slightly hysterical laughter. It took a long minute for her to stop, and she wiped her eyes as she looked at all of them staring at her.

"Oh come on, you lot! Mark? An alien? No way." She giggled again, then sobered. "Besides. If he died and then…regenerated? Wouldn't he look different, according to you?"

"We don't think he regenerated," Rose began. As she drew breath to continue, the Doctor spoke instead.

"Annie, in our universe, the Time Lords had a contraption called the chameleon arch." He gave the briefest possible sketch of the technology, but did not mention his own first-hand experience with it, not wanting to distract from the issue at hand.

He didn't know what reaction he expected at the end of his recital, but all he got was Annie's stare. She still looked disbelieving, but he thought he also saw a hint of fear.

Rose leaned forward. "Annie, you've mentioned Mark's parents. Was there anything unusual about them?"

Annie crinkled her brow. "What do you mean? They were American."

Rose chuckled despite herself. "Anything else? Did he resemble them, physically?"

"Well, no. He was adopted." She saw the significant glances between the other three and protested, "Now, that's hardly unusual…" Suddenly she broke off, clearly thinking.

"What? What is it?" Rose asked, perhaps a bit sharply.

"Well. It's… It's strange." She smiled slightly. "I used to tease them. Janet and David. They had no photos of him as a child. He'd been theirs since he was a baby, you see. But there were no photos on display. Janet always said they were stored in their safe deposit box, but…why would that be? I use to tell them they were the least sentimental people I knew. I asked Mark about it—I mean really, I wanted to see his baby pictures, you know, to tease him! But he always brushed me off. I assumed… I assumed he wasn't happy with his parents about it. I always left it alone, though—I'm not adopted, I didn't know the dynamics…" She paused, and then shook her head. "But no, this is too ridiculous. There must be a simple explanation."

Jake said, "Did he have a close friend? Someone who seemed always to be around?"

Annie's mouth curved. "What, Gus? The original third wheel?"

"Who was Gus?"

"His friend. Since childhood. I always said there were three of us in the relationship, right from the beginning."

"Gus was American?"

"Yes."

"But…you said 'right from the beginning.' Gus was at Oxford with Mark? When Mark was doing his research?"

"Well, yes."

"Why? What was he doing?"

Annie stared at Jake. She did not speak for a long time. "I'm not sure, really. He was always just around. I…I did ask. He said something about… some sort of degree. History of Art, maybe?"

"Hmm. And did he stay in Oxford when you and Mark moved back to the States?"

"No. He came too."

"To do what?"

"I don't know!" Annie snapped, looking harassed. "He always had some job or other." She shook her head impatiently. "He was the best friend of the man I loved. What was I supposed to do, check up on him? He was in Mark's life. Why? What is so suspicious about an aimless friend?"

"Nothing, in and of itself," Rose said. "But, in our universe, Time Lords often traveled with a companion. And if he was using the chameleon arch, he'd particularly need someone to look after him, to make him change back when it was necessary."

Annie gave a short laugh, all disbelief and no humor. "So you want me to believe that my husband…that my marriage was a farce? Some sort of sideshow to an alien's plot? And that Gus—silly, disorganized Gus—was his…keeper?" She shook her head. "I don't… I don't even know what to say to that."

The Doctor said, gently, "We're trying to explain what might have happened, Annie. And it sounds like there are things…that at least fit with the idea we're presenting."

"No." She shook her head, but she was trembling. "No." Suddenly it seemed that a thought occurred to her. "Anyway. He died. In the crash. Would a Time Lord who was…" she searched for the proper words but gave up, resorting to air quotations, "'chameleon-arched', would he have died if he had been in an accident like that?"

"Yes. His Time Lord spirit was probably kept elsewhere, in a container of some sort, and might have been able to be preserved, but the body would have been gone."

"Well, there you are. He died, but now he's back in the same body? It doesn't fit your theory!"

The three of them looked at each other. They knew what they had to ask, but no one seemed willing to do so. Finally, Rose spoke, trying to make her voice as gentle as possible. "Did you ever see his body?"

The Doctor would not have thought Annie could get paler, but she did. Her skin took on an almost greenish tinge as she met Rose's eyes with a horrified gaze. "What?" she whispered.

Rose swallowed but pushed on. "His body. Did you see it?"

"No…no. The doctor told me I wouldn't want to, that there…that there wasn't much that was recognizable." Annie swiped at tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes. "He was hit by a truck on a busy street."

Jake grimaced and reached out, almost reflexively, for Annie's hand, but she was curled up in her chair now as if to protect herself from their questions, her arms wrapped around her middle.

Rose said, "Then how did they identify his body?"

"He was in the military for two years, before university. There were dental records, DNA samples on file. They…they ran tests, they told me." Annie looked from one to the other of them. "They gave me his cycling helmet and his clothes, covered in blood. They were stiff with blood, Rose! There was so much… His book bag, or what was left of it…all the pages of the books were ruined, bloody. I mean, my God…his parents were there! They were devastated. Why would I have thought that anyone was trying to deceive me?"

At this Jake could take no more and sprang from his seat, coming around the table and kneeling by her chair. "We're not saying that you did anything wrong, or that you should have done more."

"Then what are you saying?"

Jake pried her fingers loose from her own elbow and held them. "We're suggesting…" He paused, and shook his head. Rose saw his throat work and knew he was choked up. She looked into Annie's wide eyes and took over. "We're suggesting that Mark didn't die in a crash. That it was staged. That for whatever reason, he had to become a Time Lord again, and so Gus—or whoever—let his Time Lord consciousness out of the watch and…" she stopped when Annie drew in a harsh breath.

"Annie? What is it?"

"What did you say?"

"What…which part?"

"A watch? Let him out of a watch?"

The Doctor spoke up. "It wouldn't have to be a watch…some sort of small object that could be opened and closed, that he could keep with him. That's what they'd use to hold the Time Lord consciousness."

Annie unfolded herself from the chair with such suddenness that Jake rocked backward onto his heels and then sat on the ground, looking up at her, eyes wide. She stood, gripping the edge of the table, trembling from head to toe. "Mark had a watch. A pocket watch. He always had it, although he never told me where it came from. After he…" She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Two tears made their way down her cheeks. "I looked for it. I asked the people at the morgue about it. No one knew where it was. I was frantic. I wanted it back, I wanted something he'd carried next to his skin all those years…" Her face crumpled and she began to cry in earnest.

The Doctor rounded the table and reached for her. She allowed herself to be drawn into his arms and laid her forehead on his shoulder until her sobs quieted. Then she stepped back and smiled a watery smile, accepting the handkerchief he offered her and rubbing her eyes. "So this is the explanation? I suppose I should be glad I'm not certifiable, seeing him again like that."

Rose said, "Well, it's our working hypothesis for the moment."

Annie nodded. "It's just hard to fathom. Mark—or not-Mark, I suppose—walking around, not remembering me, crossing paths with me, having no idea..."

She paused as she saw Jake, who was still seated on the floor next to her chair, begin to shake his head. He said, "No, the Time Lords remember what happens during the time they were…" Suddenly he bit off his words mid-sentence. Rose stared at him, not understanding for a moment the dawning horror on his face. Then its significance struck her and she clapped her hand over her mouth, turning to Annie, who seemed to have frozen into stone, her eyes on Jake.

"He knows?" Annie's voice was almost inaudible.

Jake slowly nodded. Annie transferred her gaze to Rose, who also nodded, her hand still pressed hard to her lips. "But how do you know that he remembers?" Annie said, whispering still. She shook her head, somewhere between decisive and pleading. "He can't remember everything. If he did, he would have come back to me, at least to explain. You can't be sure. How can you be sure?"

"Because I remember everything." This from the Doctor. Rose looked at him and saw instantly that while she and Jake had not thought through the emotional impact of their explanation for Mark's reappearance, the Doctor had. He looked so very tired, and so very sad. Despite his earlier denial, he looked more like a Time Lord at that moment than he ever had.

"What do you mean?" Annie looked confused. "What do you remember?"

The Doctor wished, more than anything, that he did not have to respond. But he knew that she deserved the truth. "When I was a Time Lord, I used the chameleon arch, Annie. I became human. I fell in love. And I remember all of it. I always did, from the moment I changed back."

The expression on Annie's face as she registered his words was difficult to describe—not exactly grief, nor sadness, nor anger, but some mix thereof. Then it occurred to Rose—this is what it looks like when faith is shattered.

Annie said, her voice chill and emotionless, "He remembers me. He knows what his death must have done to me. And yet he never came back. He left me behind." Each sentence should have been a question, but was instead a clipped declarative. She looked at each of them for confirmation. To their credit, none of them avoided her eyes, but none of them could give her the comfort of denying what she said. Annie gripped her hands together and stared down at them for a long moment. Finally, Rose said quietly, "Annie, love…" At the sound of her name, Annie started as if stung. Rose took a step toward her but Annie flung up a hand to stop her. Then, without a word, she turned and ran for the staircase door. It slammed shut behind her and they heard her footsteps echoing against the concrete walls of the stairwell.

The three of them were silent for a full minute, each seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Then the Doctor sighed and said, "I know where she'll be. I'll go."


End file.
